Israel: “Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards.”—Isa. 1:23, AV.

In the United States in recent years there has been so much giving and receiving of “gifts” in Washington that books, newspapers and magazines have been filled with reports of exposés. So disgraceful was the situation that legislators were stung into appointing a committee to make “proposals for improvement of ethical standards in the federal government,” an admission that ethics were at an all-time low.

Not that this matter of giving and receiving gifts is limited to politicians. In the spring of 1957 the public press told of a certain clergyman, James J. Stewart, of the Southwest, who was unfrocked at a secret hearing because of his agitation against the practice of church officials soliciting “love gifts” from ministers in their charge, which they in turn presented to their bishops.

About the same time newspaper headlines told of dishonest dealings on the part of labor union officials. Those high in industry not only told of making “loans” and outright gifts to labor union officials but, in certain instances, charged that it was such a common practice that government officials had authorized making such gifts and even furnished the needed money when government contracts were involved.

A rather striking exception was furnished by the president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Dubinsky. He not only established a rule strictly forbidding any officers of his union accepting gifts from employers but even required that those who had accepted gifts before this rule was established must confess to him that they did. Why did he make this rule? Because he knew that such gifts exerted a “corrupting influence” on labor union officials. He thereby was underscoring what God’s law to Moses some 3,500 years ago stated regarding the receiving of gifts or bribes, namely, that they blind “clear-sighted men and can distort the words of righteous men.” Yes, “a bribe destroyeth the understanding.”—Ex. 23:8; Eccl. 7:7, AS.

A person may naively think at the time that there is nothing wrong in accepting a gift from an ostensible friend, but in doing so he unconsciously becomes indebted to the giver and in a way bound to him, and his judgment becomes warped whether he realizes it or not. The counsel to be “cautious as serpents and yet innocent as doves” may well be applied to this matter of giving and receiving gifts. A wise person will think twice before he will accept a gift from a person if he is in a position to do such a one a favor. Truly the Bible is a lamp and a light for all those that want to do what is right.—Matt. 10:16.

● Lutheran minister Walter C. Gerkin recently lamented the widespread Bible illiteracy among high school students. In doing so he observed, as reported in the Rochester (Michigan) News of November 14, 1956: “The religious illiteracy of our day was recently revealed by a questionnaire addressed to 18,434 high school students. 87 percent of them could not name three disciples of Jesus; and 64 percent of them could not name the four Gospels. . . . It is inconceivable that a high school pupil, properly instructed in the rudiments of Christianity, should score less than 100 percent on the above three questions.” The minister made no comment on how many of the illiterates had gone to Christendom’s Sunday schools.